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Monday, April 29, 2013

This year for Mother's Day I'm tempted to make a list of what I want and top of that list is a retreat of some sort. We've talked at length here about how invaluable retreating to write is for us. Each year we get away for a four-day retreat, and I am not alone in saying how much I cherish that time with my co-bloggers/writers. Love it. Can't do without it.

Options for retreats for writers vary as widely as genres. There are structured retreats led by other writing professionals designed to further your craft. You sign up, pay a fee, show up and get out of it what you put into it. Others require a submission before they let you attend. You can expect a more structured workshop environment at those and will likely pay a higher fee as well.

This is just a smattering of writing getaways offered. Some amazing ones such as Squaw Valley and Bread Loaf have already closed their applications, so put those on your list for next year.

Or you can create your own retreat simply by holing up in a nearby hotel, crashing at someone's lake house or spending some alone time at the beach. You can also pair up with a writing buddy who shares your work ethic and half of the expenses. But attending an event surrounded by others who take the business of writing as serious as you do helps you focus on the goal of getting words on the page.

The message is: make getting away a priority. Schedule it. Make it happen. Happy Mother's Day from you to you.

*I have not attended any of these; nor did I get compensated for mentioning them. Explore at your own risk!

Friday, April 26, 2013

In her post last Friday, Susan mentioned an incident
that occurred at my children’s elementary school on the same day as the Boston
Marathon bombings.

Here are the facts, as reported by the Dallas news
stations. On the morning of April 15th, 2013, a pregnant woman was
shot and killed by her ex-boyfriend. The
murder occurred a block from an elementary school, which was placed on lockdown
until the suspect left the area. He was later located by police, and a long car
chase ended back near the crime scene, where the suspect shot a police
officer (who lived) and barricaded himself into another house near the school. The
school was placed back on lockdown until the end of the day. The suspect was
arrested about an hour after school dismissed.

When I returned home after a morning of running
errands, I received an automated message that simply informed me the school was on precautionary lockdown due to criminal activity in the area. All children
safe and accounted for. I decided to stick close to home until I heard back, but
was not particularly worried. Then I received a second automated call. This
time the principal’s voice contained a hint of distress. She said the school
was again on lockdown as police tried to apprehend a suspect who had shot an
officer and barricaded himself into a nearby house. All children were being
kept away from windows.

Now I was worried.

While trying to find out what was happening , I learned
about the bombings in Boston. What if the guy near the school had explosives
and intended to blow up the house, and himself, in close proximity to my
babies. He had killed a pregnant woman and tried to kill a cop. This is Texas.
His life is over.

I paced as I waited for a third call. It came.
Lockdown still in place.

Live web
footage showed dozens of cop cars blocking off a familiar street. I knew
exactly where they were. If disaster happened, the auditorium side of the
school would bear the brunt of it. My second grader’s classroom is
uncomfortably close. I prayed she was being kept in the gym.

Photo by Deborah Downes

When the lockdown lifted for dismissal it was like
driving into a war zone. Police cars everywhere. Checkpoints. Frantic parents
approaching on foot only to be turned away. Harried teachers and children
standing in organized clumps on the lawn in front of the school. News cameras
recorded everything from across the street. They’re like buzzards waiting for
carnage, I thought. Thankfully, they got none.

My second grader told me she had spent
four-and-a-half hours sitting “criss-cross applesauce” on the floor. She was told
to hunch down and stay silent. The kids didn’t know what was going on, only
that it was not a drill. She did not want to be left alone when she got home,
and her legs hurt from being still so long, but was fine after being assured
she’d never been in danger and that the bad guy was in jail.

My sixth grader had it far worse. The murder scene
was visible from her classroom window. She chose not to look when she saw
police cars surrounding the home, but a few of her classmates reported seeing a
bloodied woman being loaded into an ambulance. Worse, those kids knew the woman
was the mother of one of their friends, a boy in the next classroom over. He
had already lost his father in Iraq.

Photo by Deborah Downes

My daughter’s teacher was understandably distraught,
likely because the faculty and administration communicated over e-mail. She would
have known the woman had died and that police had come to take her son away.
Perhaps it was for this reason that my daughter was never told the suspect was
not in the building looking for more victims. She was merely told to hide and
keep quiet. She claimed never to have been scared for herself. She was
frightened for her sister, whom she couldn’t get to. She was scared for her
friends, and spent some time considering who in the room she would try to save
if the room was invaded. She was most scared for ME, and how I would take it if
something happened to her.

Yes, my eleven-year-old would be one of those people
running toward the blast in Boston, trying to shield little kids. She would be
one of the “helpers” Mr. Rogers mentioned in his now famous quote. I can only
aspire to be so selfless, and am both proud of and terrified for her.

She, too, has recovered now other than for concern
over the boy who lost his mom.

It will take me a bit longer to be fully okay. I
remind myself every day how lucky I am that I can hold my children. That they
are alive and whole and that no one had actually intended them harm.

I’m sure this contributed to what on the surface
seemed like a rash decision this past weekend. The girls have been begging for
about a year now, and I no longer had the will to object to something that
shows faith in the future. We have added a six-week-old Boston Terrier to our
family. She is deaf, but this only makes her more special to us. Freya is a fearless little girl, an alpha female to our zeta male, Thor.
Who could resist this face?

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

You get Publisher's Lunch, right? It's fun to peruse each day, see what's up, what's sold, scan the job listings in case I get a hankering to move to New York. And then they always list if anyone in the publishing world has passed away.

The other day, they announced the death of E.L. Konigsburg, probably know best as the Newberry-winning author of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Which, by the way, was a book I was aware of in my elementary school days, and which won accolades the year after I was born, but which I believe I have never actually read.

But reading of her death, I didn't think of that book at all, though it's of course the one that was mentioned. I instead remembered another book, the one I did read, and read, and read, in elementary school.

My copy, purchased as an adult

I am sure I first picked it up in our school library/multi-purpose room (there I go giving away my age again: is there a more education-in-the-70's term than "multi-purpose room"?) because, well, it had my name in it. There were a number of books I read, and mostly enjoyed, that were chosen for that reason. But this one stuck with me, and now, three decades or so later, I've probably read it a good dozen times or more. Forced my kids to read it, too. In fact, I went hunting for the copy pictured here when I read of Ms. Konigsburg's passing, and found it in my daughter's room rather than on the bookshelf in our playroom (where it goes, ahem).

"E. L. Konigsburg is the only author to have won the Newbery Medal and be runner-up in the same year. In 1968 From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler won the Newbery Medal and Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth was named Newbery Honor Book. Almost thirty years later she won the Newbery Medal once again for The View From Saturday. She has also written and illustrated three picture books: Samuel Todd's Book of Great Colors, Samuel Todd's Book of Great Inventions, and Amy Elizabeth Explores Bloomingdale's. In 2000 she wrote Silent to the Bone, which was named a New York Times Notable Book and an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, among many other honors.
After completing her degree at Carnegie Mellon University, Ms. Konigsburg did graduate work in organic chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh. For several years she taught science at a private girls' school. When the third of her three children started kindergarten, she began to write. She now lives on the beach in North Florida."

She began to write the year her third kid started kindergarten. Well. I began writing in earnest the year my youngest began pre-K, which surely provided about the same amount of time to write as she had back in the 60's. (I had half-day kindergarten myself, and our district here only began full day kindergarten they year my son started.) Which means, this lady who is likely familiar, through the book I loved, or the one everyone else did, or one of her many, many others, to pretty much every American reader who is a target audience of all six of us on this blog--got her start at roughly the same moment in her life as I did.

I don't know how long it took her to pen either one of those books. I don't know what her journey was, which one came first, or even if anything else came first. But no matter what she did, how she did it, she did it, and she started out in a similar place as me.

I loved that book, and chances are I'll pick it up again in the coming weeks and read it again. In some ways, it will be like the first time, because though she used my name, I never realized before that we had something in common. I wish I'd known a few years earlier. I wish I could have told her.

We were like those old people who think their home is “hip” (when we were selling my mother's home, she absolutely refused that we
remove the gold wallpaper and curtains – “That's good stuff!”)

So, here we
were, thinking it might be a long wait for the right buyer.

The house in showing condition and busy season wrapping up
at work, I looked forward to a little extra writing time and perhaps some quick
weekend trips to enjoy the Texas five-minute spring. My husband would shoot
some photos, I’d jot down some observations for future writing, and we’d have nice
leisurely days.

On exactly April 15th, we got a contract on the
house (three weeks after we listed it). But oh, by the way, the buyers have three kids
under five years old (including a one-month-old) and need to be in the house in two
weeks because they’ve already sold their home. Suddenly, we had no place to
live and no idea where we wanted to be.

The day after we learned we had to move in two weeks, my back
went out. I could barely move, let alone pack or look for a place to live.
After a few visits to the chiropractor, I was finally able to sit in a car and
off I went house hunting. We decided to rent for a while, but when I began to
look at single-family rentals I was gobsmacked at the disrepair and filth of
the homes. Stained carpet, empty food containers in the bedroom, sagging
floors (not to mention handguns on top of nightstands). One of the owners had the nerve to request we remove our shoes before walking
through! I would have given anything for my mother’s gold wallpaper. At least
her home was spotless and in good working order.

Finally, we found an empty-nester condo, with a
perfect-for-us floorplan, great amenities and solid construction for peace and
quiet. One slight problem… the current tenants can’t vacate until
June 1, which means we’ll have to stay at a short-term rental for a month. The
logistics of moving our house into half storage, half smaller place, half
long-term, half short-term has driven me off my self-imposed sugar detox wagon.
(Pamela, those frozen lemon cake balls are divine!)

Meantime, my mother fell and earned some ugly scrapes. We’ve
been pleading with her to use her walker, but as a prideful
eighty-nine-year-old and the spry one at her assisted living facility, she refuses. "I'm too young for one of those cotton-pickin' things!" Before I could take a breath, another
family member headed to the hospital. Thankfully after a few days, she’s checked
out and back home.

So the two weeks is ticking, ticking, and we’re packing like
fiends. In the midst of this, a critique partner called and wanted an emergency
read-through on a scene she’s turning in to an editor. So I woke early to read
through for her and then got back to the packing grind. I’m not getting any writing
done, but my new story is playing in my head while I load and tape boxes, and
when a brilliant idea strikes, I stop and send myself an email reminder from my
phone.

As I pack, I find memories of our time in this house and
others. Today I found my son’s silver rattle, three boxes of Mother’s Day and
birthday cards from my guys, and my mother’s typed recipe binder from 1992.

As Susan said in her lovely Friday post, “… step back and
take the time to focus on who we love and the joy in our lives, instead of the
latest tragedy. Because when I look closely at the past seven days, my life has
still been filled with beauty and art, not just the bombardment of tragedies.”

Yes, I've had a piling-on week. But in light of everything that’s going on in the world, my
snowballing drama reminds me I have a full life, lots of friends and family to
love, and books to read—and write!

Friday, April 19, 2013

As I write this, bombing suspect Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev is still on the run in Massachusetts five days after two bomb blasts
killed three and injured 170 people at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

Seventy-five miles south of me in
West, Texas, work crews, volunteers, and police are sifting through toxic
rubble looking for bodies at the West Fertilizer Plant explosion: the death
count from Wednesday has still not been confirmed.

Letters laced with ricin were
intercepted in Washington this week, addressed to President Obama and
Mississippi senator Roger Wicker.

On Wednesday, the senate rejected
an amendment to expand gun background checks, going against what the majority
of Americans clearly support, yet the NRA does not.

Closer to home, our own Kim
Bullock's daughters' elementary school was on lockdown Monday after a man
killed his pregnant girlfriend and eluded police for a few tense hours before
being captured in Dallas.

And outside of America, Crazy
World? Last week, North Korea pointed nukes at us—maybe. A blast in Baghdad
killed twenty-seven, and dozens were killed in Somalia at a courthouse attack. Dictators
are ranting or threatening, others are imprisoned. Earthquakes and
landslides and fires ravage the planet. The world keeps spinning, and it seems
the violence expands, all over the earth, all around us. We are not the center,
dear people, we are the passengers, turning against each other out of fear and
loneliness and hatred.

I wish I could write this letter
to you to provide a solution, or an antidote to this violence, this hate, and
to the randomness of pain. Instead I'm asking that we step back and take the
time to focus on who we love and the joy in our lives, instead of the latest
tragedy. Because when I look closely at the past seven days, my life has still been
filled with beauty and art, not just the bombardment of tragedies.

For example:

I was honored to listen to
Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout talk about her four novels, her writing process,
and her life in words.

I attended the theatre and
watched Wicked with my daughter and
her junior high choir, exploring the majesty of a live performance with
thirteen-year-olds whose faces glowed with amazement and awe at the beauty and
power of Elphaba, Glinda, and Fiyero.

I did daily yoga, ran six miles,
did a few hundred push-ups, and went on a long walk.

I talked to friends who love me.
I hugged my daughters. I laughed with my best friend about a strange occurrence
in our neighborhood until we both had tears streaming down our faces.

And after the prompting of a
popular quote online, I watched several episodes of Mister Rogers Neighborhood to
remind myself to be kind, loving, and full of peace to counter the effects of a
hateful world. I reminded myself to be one of the good guys, or as Mr. Rogers
says, to be one of the helpers.

And so, Crazy World, good things still
abound, love and peace can only prevail if we choose to be the solution. Help
your neighbors and community. Laugh. Produce art, write new words, paint and act
and sing. Maybe I'm a dreamer, thinking art, words and song can save us. But at
the center of all art, prose, poetry, and music, is love. And love, I believe, is the
only thing that can save us.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Following up to Pamela's Monday post, here's a photo of the group (minus Kim--ironically our ONE Mainer) at the Dallas Museum of Art Monday evening, posing with Elizabeth Strout after her on-stage conversation with Skip Hollandsworth, author of the Texas Monthly article about our favorite Texas bad boy and co-author of the Bernie movie script. Strout wrote the beloved, Pulitzer prize-winning novel in short stories, Olive Kitteridge, and is now touring in support of The Burgess Boys, a novel that returns the reader to Shirley Falls, the fictional Maine town she originally visited in Amy and Isabelle.

Elizabeth LYND (popping her head into the picture there at bottom right) and I had an interesting conversation following the event. During the Q&A, someone from the audience asked about Strout's writing process. Elizabeth L. asked her to expand on part of her answer. Strout had mentioned that she writes in notebooks and hundreds or thousands of individual sheets of paper inevitably end up everywhere--some to be used, some to be discarded. Elizabeth L. was curious how much went in the wastebasket, and Strout explained that a LOT of it ends up there, or filed away somewhere, not in any real organized fashion, perhaps to be used in something else.

While in line, I mentioned to Elizabeth L. that someone almost always asks the writing process question during the events I've done for Calling Me Home. I jokingly said, "Does it matter?" What I meant was that each writer seems to have a different process; no across-the-board method works for every single one of us. I wasn't saying it wasn't an important question, but rather that what works for me won't work for you, or Elizabeth, or Pamela, or Susan, or Joan, or Kim, and so, in a way, my process or Elizabeth Strout's process is irrelevant to anyone else.

But Elizabeth L. came back with a really good point. She said (loosely quoting), "It matters because it says to me, well, if this process works for Strout, and this other process works for Julie, and this other process works for Jamie Ford or Cheryl Strayed or Chris Cleave or ... you know ... then maybe my own, mixed-up seeming process can work for me. It gives me permission to have my own process if all these other successful writers have achieved publication with so many different processes."

I was nodding (vigorously!) and saying, "Yeah, you're absolutely right." I made a mental note to add something about that the next time I answer a writing process question.

After all, as I said to Elizabeth Lynd, there is more than one way to skin a cat.

Monday, April 15, 2013

I've never been a People magazine subscriber. I'm not a fan of celebrity interviews, per se. Nor do I stalk follow many people on Facebook or Twitter I don't personally know, unless they have something interesting to say.

Pinewood Book Club members meet Julie Kibler!

To that end, I will admit that authors tend to draw me in, and I try to not pass up an opportunity to attend a book signing or talk by someone whose work I admire. This month, we in the Dallas area have been fortunate to have several authors stop through on tours.

Of course, Julie has been back in town, making the rounds to local stores. She was even gracious enough to spend a couple hours with my book club friends at my nearby retirement community. They read (or listened to) Calling Me Home this month and seemed to be delighted to have Julie discuss her story with them. The fact that Susan came, too, made it even more special.

Even if you're not close to a big city where authors frequently stop, you can enjoy virtual tours via Facebook or their websites. Also, Oprah's OWN featured her interview with Cheryl Strayed yesterday. My mother, who lives several states away, was able to watch Cheryl's interview, giving us something to share over the miles--a treat for us both.

We'll keep posting about authors as they cross our paths and would love to hear about your experiences, too. As for me, I've dedicated a special section of my bookshelf for my autographed books. Not only did I treasure the stories they told, but each also holds a memory of the time I met the author--typically while in the company of my dear friends.

Friday, April 12, 2013

As an avid reader from the age of three and a sucker for a
good love story, I confess I’ve fallen in love with more fictional men than
real ones in my lifetime. Most are transitory infatuations that last only as
long as it takes for me to finish a novel or until they do or say something
that annoys me, whichever comes first. I don’t remember their names a month
later.

Some remain with me, luring me back to their pages so
I can again experience that heady rush. I don’t always get it. At nineteen, I
loved Emily Bronte’s Heathcliff. Twenty years later, I wonder why. My opinion
about Diana Gabaldon’s Jamie Fraser has not changed since 1992, however. I’m
sure I’ll feel much the same about Cathy Marie Buchanan’s Tom Cole and
Stephanie Cowell’s imagined version of Claude Monet.

I met my first literary love at twelve, when my mother gave
me my first copy of Jane Eyre. Ever since, Edward Rochester is like the bad boy
ex-boyfriend I’d take back in a heartbeat, damn the consequences. I forgive him
the moodiness, the mind games, and even the mad wife imprisoned in the attic. Each time
a movie version comes out, I’m at the theater and praying that the actor in that
role fits the image in my mind. He never does, though Toby Stephens was my
favorite.

My eldest daughter is now almost twelve and she, too, has
fallen in love for the first time. The object of her affection: Peeta Mellark
from The Hunger Games. As soon as she finished book three, she immediately picked
up book one again, so she could have “her” Peeta back the way she wants to
remember him.